28/06/2022
MEET THE FINALISTS: CLARA ISABELLA SIEGLE
Clara Isabella Siegle, born in 2000, is an Irish-German pianist. She has been awarded numerous national and international prizes and performs successfully at home and overseas.
A Young Steinway Artist, Clara is supported by the German Music Life Foundation, the Hans and Eugenia Juetting-Foundation and the Max-Weber Programme of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.
Clara is pursuing her studies at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Munich with Prof. Antti Siirala and at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Prof. Christopher Elton. At the age of 14, she was accepted into the Junior Studies Programme of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich where she studied with Prof. Thomas Böckheler after having formerly worked with her mother, Mary Siegle-Collins.
Clara is a prizewinner of a number of international piano competitions such as the International Piano Competition for Young Pianists Ettlingen, the International Piano Competition Enschede, the International Robert Schumann Piano Competition and the International MozARTe Piano Competition. She has been awarded 1st prizes at the International “Young Pianist of the North” Piano Competition, the Steinway Piano Competition, the Rotary Piano Competition and the Grotrian Steinweg Piano Competition. She received the maximum score and special awards at the highest level of the German national Young Musician competition. Clara has been especially acknowledged for her interpretations of Mozart and Haydn and was awarded the Classic Prize of the City of Munster in 2017.
In 2019, Clara became a scholarship holder of TONALi, a German initiative with which she collaborates to promote cultural education in children and young adults. She also regularly performs for Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Live in social establishments.
Clara has performed in major venues in many countries such as the Herkulessaal in Munich, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Musikhuset in Århus, the Gebläsehalle in Duisburg, the Cuvilliés-Theatre in Munich, the Opera House in Brunswick and the Forbidden City in Beijing. Concerts have taken Clara to China, Denmark, Ireland, France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Her performances have been broadcast internationally on BR, WDR, RTÉ and RAI. Clara has also been awarded a Gold Recital Medal by the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
After her orchestra début at the age of nine, Clara has been performing piano concertos regularly, most recently those of Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Clara Schumann and Grieg and Beethovenʼs triple concerto. She has collaborated with conductors such as Marcus Bosch, Carlos Domínguez-Nieto and Carolin Nordmeier.
Clara has taken masterclasses from Pavel Gililov, Elisso Wirssaladze, Imogen Cooper, Andrea Bonatta, John Lill, Grigory Gruzman, Finghin Collins and Bernd Glemser. In chamber music, she has worked with Jörg Widmann, Silke Avenhaus, Amandine Savary, Jan Vogler and the Quatuor Ébène. Clara has founded a clarinet-piano duo, Duo ClariPhin, with her ensemble partner Seraphin Maurice Lutz, and has since extensively worked on piano-clarinet repertoire.
In 2017, Clara was invited to a masterclass with Rudolf Buchbinder by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. She was personally selected by Maestro Murray Perahia for a masterclass organised by Henle Publishers in 2020.
Besides music, Clara nurtures an intense interest for literature and has published two children´s books. In summer 2020, she graduated from the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich in German Studies.
